Ding, Dong, the Core Is Dead

When Harvard introduced its new Core Curriculum, then-University President Derek P. Bok tried to express the difficulty of overhauling the way Harvard educates College students.

“Changing undergraduate education,” he griped to the Washington Post, “is like trying to move a graveyard.”

That was 1979, and in the succeeding decades, that Core Curriculum too managed to become deeply rooted at Harvard. Then nearly thirty years later, administrators decided it was time to lay the foundation for a Harvard education anew all over again.

The resulting curriculum was the Program in General Education, which took full effect for the Class of 2013. The seniors graduating this year passed through Harvard just as the College shifted from a framework that focused on course content to one that emphasized learning methods instead. This class and the previous one had the option of fulfilling the requirements for either the old or new curriculum.

With the graduation of the Class of 2012, the Core is officially dead. But students have not quite grasped how the 56 percent of the senior class that chose Gen Ed is differently educated from their peers who stuck with the old formula. And professors still struggle to articulate the differences between Gen Ed and the Core, saying that the financial crisis that hit the College just as Gen Ed launched has hampered the new program’s potential for radical pedagogical change. As Harvard tolls the death knell of the Core, the community questions whether the College actually moved the graveyard all over again or just polished and rearranged the headstones.

TEACHING FOR THE REAL WORLD

According to Program in General Education Associate Director Anne Marie E. Calareso, the Gen Ed curriculum seeks to give students skills in “linking the arts and sciences with the 21st century world.” It was intended to enable students to leave college with skills to process information rather than with a specific body of knowledge.

“Gen Ed came in a post-September 11 moment of fear of how to handle the real world,” said Marc F. Aidinoff ’12, who wrote his Hoopes Prize-winning thesis on general education at post-war Harvard.

The eight required course categories of Gen Ed, geared toward preparing students to face the challenges of globalization, include Societies of the World, United States in the World, and Science of the Physical Universe.

“The resulting [Gen Ed] course list is eclectic, but the courses all center on a form of intellectual empathy, learning to think like someone who thinks very differently,” Aidinoff wrote in his thesis.

The Gen Ed curriculum aims to teach students “to connect academic work with the real world,” said Anne Harrington ’82, director of undergraduate studies in the history of science department.

In her Gen Ed course, Culture and Belief 34: “Madness and Medicine,” she discusses ways that psychiatry connects to beliefs, politics, and U.S. and European history.

“I’m very interested in connecting to these things far beyond the narrow medical sense,” Harrington said. She added that she feels “liberated...to be more directly engaging” in a Gen Ed class than in a departmental course.

Calling Gen Ed “an incubator,” she said that the institution of the new framework was an “ambitious change.” But she said that the effect of that change on professors’ teaching methods cannot yet be determined.

“Exactly how it will work, I think we’re at the beginning of that conversation,” she added.

THE APPLE DOESN’T FALL FAR

When asked about the reasoning behind their decision between the Core and Gen Ed, most seniors speak not of pedagogical distinctions but of practical considerations. Most chose the program that allowed them to take fewer courses to complete their requirements.

“I had fulfilled most of my requirements anyway. It wasn’t a great hassle to continue with the old curriculum,” said Catherine W. Yang ’12, who remained on the Core. “In terms of actual education, I don’t get the impression that it changed that much.”

“Honestly, they’re making very pragmatic decisions,” Aidinoff said.

The study cards of students who chose Gen Ed often looked quite similar to those of their peers on the Core. Not all Core courses were approved as Gen Ed classes, and many had to revise their syllabi to gain approval under the new system. But Calareso wrote that the Program in General Education ensured that every new course that was approved for the Gen Ed curriculum also received a designation into one of the categories of the Core.

A course might fit Gen Ed’s Ethical Reasoning requirement as well as the Core’s Moral Reasoning, Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning as well as Quantitative Reasoning, Culture and Belief as well as Foreign Cultures. But not necessarily vice versa.

With such similar names and a concerted effort to ease the transition by making the same classes count for both plans, students find cause to question whether the students in the Class of 2012 who chose Gen Ed received a meaningfully different education.

FLIPPING THE CLASSROOM

Though students’ course selection might not look very different under Gen Ed, professors have seen a more significant set of options open up to them over the past three years of Gen Ed.

Under the new program, they are encouraged to try experimental teaching methods in order to win the Gen Ed stamp of approval for their classes. So far, those methods have included case studies and interactive activities to supplement the traditional lecture format.

Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris said that an education focused on methods of learning rather than specific bodies of knowledge is better suited to a rapidly changing world.

“This is a time of experimentation,” Harris said. “What does it mean to teach students who look at screens much more than they look at pages?”

“Gen Ed is a nice place for faculty to experiment,” he added. “For example, some have adopted elements of the flipped classroom, where lectures are posted online and classrooms are for discussion.”

Harris said that the Standing Committee on General Education, which approves courses for Gen Ed, will look to clarify the program’s requirements in the coming years based on the success of early Gen Ed courses.

“Did we frame some of these categories with the precision that we should have?” he asked.

Harris said he believes that the program’s transformative effect on undergraduate education has been muted by the economic downturn that coincided with the creation of Gen Ed and slowed faculty hiring.

“There are [faculty] searches going on all the time, but it’s mostly replacement. It will take a little bit longer than we had hoped to really develop,” he said.

While current faculty members have been encouraged to reinvigorate their teaching methods, Harris said, more new professors would be able to adapt faster to the mindset of the new curriculum and offer more Gen Ed classes.

Ali S. Asani ’77, chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, said that he hopes to introduce livestreams of lectures and online sections in his course Culture and Belief 12: “For the Love of God and His Prophet: Religion, Literature, and the Arts in Muslim Cultures.”

“Lots of students don’t come to all the lectures,” Asani said, noting scheduling conflicts and time constraints. Because of Gen Ed, teachers “are not stuck to term papers and finals,” so busy students are “learning better.”

“I think the Gen Ed program, from my personal experience, is far superior to the Core,” Asani said.

“I’ve been able to implement better pedagogical approaches,” he added. “I think it helps people learn at a deeper level, with more personal engagement with the material. I see this in the [Q Guide] evaluations. Because of the new pedagogy, they find it personally transformative.”

Asani, at least, is confident that if the vision of Gen Ed is carried out to its full extent, real educational change will result.

“I would say they learn better,” he said. “It’s sort of obvious.”

—Staff writer Sabrina A. Mohamed can be reached at smohamed@college.harvard.edu.